Olga Lanseray – Aquarius

Olga Lanseray presented her film Aquarius in the [C]Screen Festival this year. The shortfilm liked a lot to the public, specially the beautiful landscapes and the emotion the characters dancing. Here I leave you the interview I did to her:

Olga Lanseray in the film

Hello, Olga and thank you for accepting this interview. First of all, who is Olga Mandrikova Lanceray?

My appearance in the dance films is an amusing story. I started to dance after 45. Being an architect, I always work with a volume, a space and with the different static forms. Once I decided to explore myself as a moving form through a dance practice. This sudden experiment turned over my life and my world perception.

I could see that in the two films you have, Black Square and Aquarius, you are the same team working, do you have a dance/production company together?

Black Square is the first dance film which was created in cooperation with the director Timo Zhalnin and the choreographer Elena Kuzmina – former principal of the Eifman Ballet. After receiving good feedback from Festivals and audiences, we decided to go on our common creative experiment and Aquarius appeared.

It was interesting for us to try another style of filmmaking, choreography and location. One of the goals was to develop a professional-amateur partnership. The main performer in both of our films, Mikalai Radziush, is an experienced ballet dancer, soloist of the Hungarian State Opera. It was extremely useful and an essential practice for me to dance with a master.

Then we organized our own production company with the director Timo Zhalnin together. We have a lot of ideas and we are going to make experimental and fiction films with different kinds of choreographic content. We will be seeking for international collaboration with choreographers, dancers, cinematographers, composers, for a common creations.

Still from the film “Aquarius”

“A metaphor for who we are, for where we come from. A secret held in the abyss.”

In Aquarius, we can see beautiful landscapes, how did you find those amazing places to shoot?

The shooting place is in Cotlin Island, on Baltic Sea. It is really a very special place with an unusual atmosphere. We wanted to express that the nature is a not a location but a partner and one of the main protagonist in the film.

Behind these awesome images, we can find the director of photography Anna Rozhetskaya, who participated in the dance shortfilm F5 too. How was it working with her?

The cinematographer Anna Rozhetskaya is the D.O.P (Director of Photography) of the nearly all films directed by Timo Zhalnin, after their successful short F5. Anna has four festival awards as a director of photography. I would like to continue working with her in the future projects.

At the beginning of the film, the colors are desaturated and more blue than at the end of the film, where the yellow color appears with the sunset. Does it have any meaning?

We were shooting with the natural lighting and trying to catch cloudy moments. But the final scene of Aquarius was shot in the sunset by a drone. I mean that the natural warm colours help to intensify of catharsis.

More technically, which camera did you use for this shooting?

Aquarius was shot by a semi-professional Sony A7S camera, a recorder Atomos Shogun 4K and with Zeiss lenses: ZE Distagon 35mm f1.4, ZE Planar 50mm f1.4, ZE Planar 85mm f1.4. We used a RONIN Easyrig System and a flying camera on drone also.

Mikalai Radziush in the film

What is for you screendance or dancefilm?

Dance films are a great possibility to express any ideas and emotions and bring them to a big auditorium. Dance is a body language existing since the human exists. This is the universal language understanding for each of us. I am sure it is a good way of connection between people and it is very important now.

As a producer, I feel a huge possibility of interdisciplinary communication through the dance films. The contact with a different audience quickly expands and helps to film festivals and screendance. There are really unlimited possibilities, much more than performative dance have.

Do you have any future projects in mind now?

We have some new ideas for dance films. Our next project will be shot this autumn in Saint-Petersburg, in some historical interiors of an old palace. There will be a lot of performers, not a duet. Traditionally, we will be using the language of metaphors and different film techniques. Now we are running the rehearsals, the choreographer is Alisa Panchenko.

Thank you, Olga, for answering my questions. I hope we can watch more works of you next year.

Thank you, Eva, for your good questions and for your attention at our film. Good luck with [C]Screen Festival and to all participants!